


More Than A Hundred Reasons

by Berty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, M/M, Misunderstandings, Revelations, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 23:51:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10559812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berty/pseuds/Berty
Summary: John Watson has a trick to help him when Sherlock is too... Sherlock.He never claimed it was a good trick.





	

Sherlock’s hands are too big.

 

Too big and too pale with clean, blunt nails. His fingers are insanely long and slim, and he has calluses on the left-hand tips where the violin strings rub. And they are quite definitely too big. His hands would stretch almost completely around his head if Sherlock stroked them through John’s sweaty hair to cradle his skull. Not that he would, but if he did, then it would be easy for Sherlock to tip John’s head to the exact angle he needed to…

 

“Think I’ll turn in,” John announces, too loud but with only a minor crack to his voice. It seems to echo around their shabby little sitting room as if it were a much grander affair than it actually is. A glance at his watch tells him that it is only a quarter to ten and he fights down a wince.

 

“Finished, have you?” Sherlock asks with a distinctly arctic note to his voice. He doesn’t even bother to look up from the case file he’s reading by lamplight that’s really too dim.

 

“What’s that now?” John’s confusion keeps him in his chair without knowing if he’s going to get an answer or not. It could just be one of Sherlock’s random comments – but it seems a little sharp for that.

 

Sherlock waves a graceful hand in a circle at head height. “Tonight’s episode of ‘reasons why Sherlock is unacceptable’. What was it this time?”

 

John swallows and tries to find a joke to deflect the horrifying accuracy of Sherlock’s summary.

 

“Shall I have a go?” Sherlock asks with a dreadful faux enthusiasm that John has never been on the receiving end of before. He puts the file aside and raises his eyes to John who is apparently incapable of either motion or speech suddenly.

 

The detective presses his hands together and touches them to his chin in a parody of his thinking pose. “Let’s see,” he begins scornfully. “Last night it was how untidy I am and the night before it was my former addiction to opiates. Tuesday was how hirsute my lower legs are and Monday was my woeful lack of breasts. So tonight I’m thinking it was my hands and in particular my fingers. Too big and too long? No way we could pretend those were women’s fingers is there, John?”

 

There is little point in denying it; John’s face feels like it has turned to stone and it must show everything. Sherlock will annihilate anything he could make up on the spot anyway. So John just watches him and fights to keep the contents of his stomach where they are. He feels like he’s been punched in the head, in the heart, everywhere at once. He can’t seem to breathe deeply enough to stop his vision from greying-out at the edges.

 

“Ah!” Sherlock smiles bitterly and slumps back in his chair. “I see that I win. Well, that was fun. Goodnight, John.” He reaches over and picks up the file again.

 

John wants to tell him how brilliant his deductions are – those are all, in fact, actual thoughts that have crossed John’s mind since the first time that he laid eyes on the man and began to wonder. Maybe he is loosing his grip on reality slightly, because who wants to congratulate someone on uncovering their deepest, most closely held secret?

 

At first John was rattled by his reaction to Sherlock – it was physical, visceral and unprecedented. He eclipsed everything else in John’s life without even trying. He was like nothing John had ever come across before; brilliant but flawed, uncompromising but vulnerable, unpleasant but oddly attractive. John had been utterly captivated by him and become prone to thoughts that had surprised him. And that was how the list had begun.

 

John isn’t gay, but he thinks of his sexuality as being somewhat flexible. Either way, Sherlock made it crystal clear that he wasn’t interested in him or anyone else within 48 hours of them meeting.

 

So their unusual partnership had begun and John had learned not to vocalise every thought he had about Sherlock. And there had been a _lot_ of thoughts. Instead he had listed all the reasons why any stray ideas that he might have had about their friendship evolving into something more were really not good.

 

The list kept him grounded and protected him, even when the time they spent together seemed to point to there being something more there if one of them cared to look just a little harder. They’d had moments when John had thought it impossible for them to return to their ‘just friends’ status due to their intensity. But they did, every time. And whenever that happened, and the loneliness and bruises threatened to consume him, John would pull out his list and remind himself why he didn’t want anything more from Sherlock than friendship. And that he already had.

 

Or he used to have.

 

“It’s not what you think,” John says eventually, quite pleased that his voice doesn’t waver.

 

“John, really, spare me your platitudes,” Sherlock replies in a bored tone that others might have taken at face value, but that John can see through in a second.

 

“Sherlock, honestly, it’s not…”

 

Sherlock doesn’t even look up. His stillness gives him away – he’s distancing himself, pulling away from something he finds painful or confusing. John’s seen it before, the way he shuts down. People rarely come back from such a dismissal.

 

John can taste bile.

 

If he can get him to engage, he might be able to make Sherlock stay. He might be able to salvage something out of the disaster tonight has become. Of course it means that John will have to explain himself, but something like this could change everything and Sherlock isn’t always good at understanding the emotional context behind people’s actions. John will need to tell him everything, holding nothing back, laying himself bare, but he would rather Sherlock hate him for the truth than for what he currently think. If he is to be hanged, he’d rather be hanged for a sheep than for a lamb, as his grandmother used to say.

 

“Since when do you care what other people think about you anyway?” John pushes, resting his chin on his fist as if this is any other day and any other conversation. He tips toward Sherlock, crowding him in the most subtle of ways and sees the second Sherlock’s eyes refocus.

 

“Since I met someone whose first response to me wasn’t that I was some kind of freak, and who wasn’t completely stupid.”

 

“You care what I think about you?” John asks, and knows he has him now.

 

Sherlock’s gaze darts to John’s. In the lamplight, his eyes are like mercury - silver and changeable. “Is that so hard to believe?”

 

John swallows down another wave of self-loathing. “No, it’s just… you don’t give much away. Half the time I wonder if you’re even aware that I’m here.”

 

“I’m aware. In fact I think my error arises in that I always assume you’re here. I have come to rely on your presence, which is undoubtedly presumptuous of me. You can add that to your list of my flaws if it would help.”

 

“It’s not…any flaws are my own, Sherlock.”

 

The dark-haired man smiles, and it’s so bitter and brittle that it looks like the slightest breeze could dissolve it to dust. “I’m not one given to introspection, but despite what you believe, I _am_ aware of how difficult I am. There is nothing wrong with my ears or my eyes, John. I hear the things people say about me. I see what they think of me in their reactions. I simply choose to ignore them. It’s usually quite straightforward, people are normally dull, stupid and of little consequence. Apparently it’s a little more difficult to harden myself against the disappointment when it’s…you.”

 

John sighs, wipes a hand across his face and wonders if he’s ever felt like quite such a vile excuse for a human being. “I can explain that, if you’ll listen.”

 

Sherlock cocks his head and raises a sceptical eyebrow in invitation.

 

But, as it turns out, John can’t explain. This has been his life for a year and a half now. He’s lived it, breathed it, bled it, and told himself these lies for every single one of those days. How he can’t be in love with his best friend. How his heart is confused, mistaking companionship for something more. How his fractured soul has reached out and grasped at the only thing that might keep him together.

 

The silence stretches between them, like a third presence in the room. Sherlock drops his gaze to the worn carpet between their chairs. He looks defeated - smaller than he’s ever looked to John before. His pale fingers pick at the cover of the file and his bare feet look strangely vulnerable tucked underneath him on his chair.

 

Too thin.

 

Too still.

 

Too alone; not by choice, but from necessity.

 

John can’t stand to see Sherlock look diminished, and it is that which gives him a starting point. Even if Sherlock tells him to leave, he’ll know that for the time that they were together, he’d been loved.

 

He sniffs and swallows, closing his eyes. It’s easier that way.

 

“The day we met I remember thinking that I would probably never meet anyone else as interesting as you however long I lived. And then on the second day I told you you were brilliant and killed a man I’d never even seen before rather than live in a world where you were not.

 

I moved in here thinking that I’d get over feeling around you the way I did. I assumed that because I was at my lowest ebb anyone mildly interesting would seem like a lifeline. But you were…more. Extraordinary, funny, infuriating and fascinating, and it didn’t stop. It didn’t stop.

 

I knew I was in trouble, but the thought of not having you as my friend…I couldn’t. I was selfish. I tried to distract myself with the clinic, Sarah, the blog. I though that if I could get through without giving myself away then I could work around it.”

 

John opens his eyes to look at Sherlock, but the man hasn’t moved. A feeling a little like vertigo takes him, like everything beneath his feet is beginning to wash away with the tide of words he seems unable to halt.

 

“I started to persuade myself that whatever I felt about you wasn’t real. If I noticed your lips, I’d remind myself of all the times you called me idiot with them. If I admired your mind, I’d convince myself that for all your brilliance, you were missing big chunks of important stuff related to being human. If I caught the scent of your hair, I’d tell myself that anyone would smell that good if their shampoo cost as much as yours does.”

 

“It became a…habit, I suppose. A shield between you and I. I had a reason for everything – a reason why I couldn’t love that thing about you.”

 

John realises with a lurch what he’s just said, but Sherlock still sits unmoving. John isn’t even sure he’s still listening. Perhaps he’s disappeared inside his mind palace rather than listen to John spill his guts everywhere and maybe that’s for the best after all.

 

John gets up out of his chair. He has no plan on what to do next, but he can’t sit here any longer. For a second he holds his hand over his friend’s head and wonders if he has the courage to push his fingers through Sherlock’s messy hair now it’s almost too late, but he puts his hand safely in his pocket rather than make things worse.

 

“Nothing about you is unacceptable, Sherlock. None of what I told myself about you was fair or right. You made it clear at the beginning what was off the table and I agreed to that…”

 

“Shut up, John!” Sherlock snaps suddenly and John thinks he might have a small heart episode at the shock of it.

 

“Actually, no. Keep talking. Say that again.”

 

“Uh…”

 

“Something off the table? What was off the table? What table?” Sherlock’s hands spread wide in a gesture so familiar John throat closes up momentarily.

 

John blinks and Sherlock looks up to scowl at him.

 

“I, uh…” John scrapes a thumbnail across his eyebrow. “That evening, before we chased that taxi across London on foot. I forgot my cane. You told me you considered yourself married to your work.”

 

“You wanted to have sex with me?”

 

“What? No!” John wonders how he’s still not used to these insane changes of speed and direction in Sherlock’s thinking. “Not…then. But you were very clear about it and you never showed the slightest interest in anyone, so I thought…”

 

“What about now?”

 

John squints, trying to keep up. “What about now?”

 

“Do you want to have sex with me now?”

 

John opens his mouth to deny it, but finds he can’t make the word ‘no’. “I’m sorry,” he breathes instead.

 

“Just to be completely clear as I’ve heard that people get quite het up about this subject,” Sherlock says, unfolding himself from the chair and standing much too close to John for comfort. “You didn’t want to have sex with me, but then you changed your mind so you thought up a way to counter any attraction to me with a crude negative reinforcement exercise because you thought that I wouldn’t want sex with you or anyone else…”

 

“Do you think you could stop saying ‘sex’ now?” John asks faintly, looking up at Sherlock’s pensive face, which completely ignores him and talks over the top of him.

 

“And now that I have pointed out how obvious it has been to me every time you have contemplated wanting to have… make love…shag?”

 

John winces and shakes his head at Sherlock’s attempts.

 

He huffs. “John, just… do you want me or not?”

 

About a million words all try to crowd out of John’s mouth at once. John settles for, “F’nuh?” He presses his fingers over his lips and holds on to give his brain time to catch up.

 

John has been on the wrong end of a good few breakups in his time, but this one is a kind of special hell. What does Sherlock want him to say? Why doesn’t he just kick him out and have done with it? John hopes very much that Sherlock hasn’t discovered that he is capable of pity or guilt or anything that will prolong this horror.

 

“I can do better,” John surprises himself by saying through his fingers. He moves his hand. “Give me a chance and I will…”

 

“John, you’re an idiot.”

 

“Well, yes, but I really think I can…”

 

“Do…you…still...want…me?” Sherlock grits out, all sharp eyes and cheekbones and intensity.

 

“God, yes,” John blurts finally. Loud again. Too loud.

 

Sherlock nods. ‘Hmmmm. Good. I want you, too.”

 

John nods at Sherlock’s voice like it’s a conditioned response, because it looks like Sherlock wants him to say something, but John has no idea what any of what he said actually means. And then he blinks. He licks his lips and rocks onto his heels.

 

“And to be clear, I’m talking about fucking,” Sherlock says seriously. “With you. And me, obviously. And I think… no, I’m certain that I want this to be a long-term arrangement, how do you feel about that?”

 

“Okay,” John says, breathless and swept up in something he had no chance of understanding, but it somehow seems to be going in a good direction.

 

“And I will still tell you you’re an idiot, when I feel there is no other word more appropriate.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“So you will need to associate my lips with something other than insults, however accurate they might be.”

 

John just croaks, because that made sense. And what the hell is he meant to do with _that_ statement?

 

Sherlock is gone in a swirl of blue silk and shampoo scented hair. It should be ridiculous, but it isn’t, damn him.

 

John decides to wait until the room stops swaying and until he has taken at least one breath that doesn’t stop at his collarbone. He wonders vaguely about psychotic episodes or whether Sherlock has been putting dodgy sugar in his coffee again.

 

“Come _on_ , John!” Sherlock’s voice, impatient and slightly irritated, is coming from his bedroom.

 

They should talk about this. There’re definitely a lot of things that should be sorted out before they do anything else, particularly anything as life changing as what Sherlock has in mind. There are plans to make and strategies to agree on and big decisions that they shouldn’t rush into…

 

“John?” Sherlock’s voice is quieter this time.

 

John turns and sees Sherlock in his ratty t-shirt, his head tipped to one side as he looks around the doorframe. His unruly curls are lit from behind and his fingers drum nervously against the woodwork. His eyes are wide and a little bit lost.

 

John smiles and watches Sherlock blink. Then he smiles too.

 

Big decision made.

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> For Saladscream and Pepe. Like always.
> 
> I know I chickened out on the interesting bits again - I'm building up to it. *wibbles*


End file.
